Precious Adebanjo – Secretary

Precious Adebanjo is a lawyer with over 12 years practical experience working on legal issues related to regulatory and policy compliance, governance, Intellectual Property, genetic resources, technology transfer, grants management, privileges and immunities, and international law.

She is currently the Assistant Manager, Legal Services Unit at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, Nigeria. In this role she provides legal advice and manages documents for IITA’s regulatory and policy compliance and its collaborations for research, partnerships, delivery and scaling activities. She served on the drafting working group established by the Ad-Hoc Committee on Governance for the implementation of the CGIAR unified governance review in November 2023.

Before joining IITA in 2018, Precious worked for over 6 years in a major commercial law firm in Lagos, Nigeria, where she advised and represented clients on corporate governance/compliance, financial transactions, intellectual property law issues and arbitration proceedings. In this role she undertook company secretarial work for different corporate entities and also worked on advisory documents for government agencies in the areas of technology transfer and infrastructure development. Precious previously worked at the Faculty of Law, Centre for Law and Business, Lagos, where she taught undergraduates Commercial Law and Contract Law for the University of London International Programmes.

Precious holds a Master of Laws in Information Technology and Communications Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Ibadan. She is admitted to the Nigerian Bar.

She has a keen interest in legal frameworks for technology transfer and has a Cambridge Advance Online certification in Research Commercialisation and Technology Transfer. She co-writes and edits an online resource (Flora IP) on agriculture, intellectual property rights and related areas such as international trade law.